I’m leaving for Piura (and potentially Mancora) at 3:00am this upcoming morning, so this is going to be the last blog post before the new year. Happy New Year everyone! Eat, drink, and be merry for me.
The last three days have been basically amazing and have really solidified Santo Domingo as being “home” for the next few years. The night of christmas, I sat on my front porch with my older host brother and sister and their friends (in their mid-20s) who were in town for the holidays. Among them were aspiring doctors, architects, psychologists, anthropologists, etc. It was the first time I had an opportunity to hang out with educated people my age and it was amazing. My host brother brought out his guitar and we all sang songs. They even made up a quick welcome home song for me while I was in the bathroom, which was adorable. We sat around drinking cañaso (moonshine) and philosophizing about god, love, hate, socialism, friendship… it was exactly like a summer night back home with my friends. All that was missing was the bonfire and fireflies. We were out talking until 5am at which point, I went inside and made some mac and cheese for everyone before going to bed.
Saturday I went to go sacrifice a cuy so I could eat it for lunch the next day. Apparently, some people find this unforgivable/barbaric/out of character for someone who was a vegetarian for five years… Well let me explain. Yeah, it’s a pretty savage process, but it’s something that I need to know that I can do. It’s a survival skill. If I’m ever out in the wilderness alone, I won’t starve. Because i know how to do this now. Plus, I’m hungry. For protein. Meat is expensive – a luxury here. My diet consists of bread, rice, and potatoes. I get full, but my body craves the vitamins. The women here have to kill their own chickens and cuys and prepare them, so there’s no reason that I shouldn’t do the same. I live here now. And I want meat.
So for those curious about the process, it will be detailed here. If you don’t want to read it, you should stop reading now:
So I actually ended up killing three cuys because they don’t actually have that much meat, but they’re 20.3% protein (more than chicken and cow) and have less cholesterol than other types of meat as well. First, you have to snap the cuys’ neck. This doesn’t usually kill it, but paralyzes it so that you can slit it’s throat. Then you pick up its body and drain the blood. Unfortunately, this process takes several minutes and is probably the hardest part. Sometimes they take too long to die, so Luz, the woman who was teaching me just throws them in boiling water and they drown and finish bleeding out quickly. At this point, the hot water makes it easier to pluck the hair off of them. It’s really hard to pluck the hair off of their faces. If the water isn’t hot enough it’s a really long process. If it’s too hot, parts of the cuy’s ear and skin fall off with the hair. After it is de-haired, you wash it off and do a careful incision down its belly to remove the intestines – but not the liver – that’s for eating. Then you have to crack its ribs and rip open its rectum to clean everything out thoroughly. You put them in salt water for about an hour and then hang them up to dry. The next day they are ready to cook.
And they are delicious. It was the biggest feast I have had since I moved to site and cuy brain is maybe the yummiest part.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I found no pleasure in this act. It was savage and violent and difficult. But I know I can do it if I have to. I’m not planning on making a habit of it, but I am grateful for the experience.
Moving right along. I am going to work with the “vacaciones utiles” during the rainy season to start some projects with the kids – endangered species awareness, trash pickups, reforestation, I don’t know what else yet, but it’ll be great. I find that I really have no interest at all in teaching English, so I am going to leave that to Ryan.
Today I went on a walk to the nearest caserillo, San Fransisco, with Cynthia, my older sister. It was freaking gorgeous. And now that I can kind of figure out where it is on my own, I’ll be taking a lot more walks. It was great exercise and the scenery is incomparable. Plus, it was fun conversation. Well, I’m off to go pack up for my ride for the New Year. I miss you all!!! Muah muah muah!
Peace,
Sasha
Happy New Year! December 29, 2008
Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah/Kwanza/Festivus from Peru! December 26, 2008
Christmas in Santo Domingo was lovely. Different, what with the lack of snow and completely commercialized atmosphere I’m used to, but lovely. My host brother and sister who study in Piura came home for Christmas so the house is a little more full than usual. But their presence brought out a lot of holiday cheer and the rest of the family was notably happier. At midnight on the 24th they placed the baby Jesus into his rightful place in the nativity, said grace, and had a feast. It was more about family and less about Santa and presents and that was refreshing to see. After eating, we walked out past where the street lights end and there is no light pollution and all just stood around looking at the stars for about an hour. These stars are absolutely amazing. It’s unbelievable. It’s the most three-dimensional I have ever seen stars in the sky. They looked like snowflakes suspended in the air mid-fall, just hovering above us.
On the 25th, I made some guacamole and shared some raspberry tea from the US. We made lemon pie, took lots of naps, read, and watched Beauty and the Beast in spanish. It was also a pretty adorable day.
Today I’m trying to find stuff to do to keep me occupied, but as it is the day after christmas and a friday no less, it is proving more difficult than I anticipated. I may have to just work on making my surveys. I haven’t given up yet, though!
So I hope everybody is enjoying their holidays immensely!
Missing you all like crazy,
Sasha
P.S. The Bronchitis is nearly gone now and I have 2 more days of pills left, so that should be good before the New Year!
update: So finding things to do today wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. First, I stopped by my usual tienda to hang out with the ladies and happened upon some locally produced coffee, which was a delight. Then, I went over to the secondary school that has been recently reconstructed and talked to the director about making a world map on one of the new walls. We picked out a wall and after the new year I am going to gather up whichever students I can find that didn’t leave town for the rainy season and start working on the world map with them. Then, I went to go look for my counterpart in the municipality, but he wasn’t there so I went looking for my other counterpart, Luz. She completely and totally made my day. We talked about the problem with medical waste disposal and luckily her cousin happens to be the man in charge of CLAS, the administrative organization of doctors. They will be meeting shortly after the new year and I will prepare a presentation for them about proper disposal of medical waste. I will then go around with the garbage men every wednesday to make sure it is being done correctly until there is behavior change. After talking to Luz for a few hours, I went to go chat with the tijedoras… the women weavers for a while. They are adorable ladies.
Then came lunch.
After lunch, I went back to go meet up with Luz to go to the campo – see her little farm. If anyone has ever wondered how disgusting pig slop is… I can now tell you with certainty that it is as disgusting as a dirty diaper filled with indian food. The piglets were adorable though! And the big pig was just ugly enough that when she asked me if I wanted to help her kill it, I told her that would be no problem for me as long as I could also help eat it after. So she’s going to go around and make sure there’s enough of a demand for pig meat in town right now and if there is, we’re going to go kill it and eat part of it in a few days. There’s something oddly unsettling about looking at an animal and knowing that you are going to take its life.
After taking care of the pigs, we walked around and ate fresh fruit off of the trees: guava, pomarosa, and lucuma. I collected seeds from the pomarosa, lucuma, and faique trees to be able to start planting native species in my nursery coming up after the new year. We also passed this gorgeous pica del oro flower. It was unreal.
So there you have it. Apparently there is a lot you can do the day after Christmas on a friday. Who knew? This may actually have been my most productive day thus far.
Tomorrow I am going to go kill a cuy (guinea pig) and help prepare it so that I can have it for lunch on Sunday. I finally really feel like I am in the Peace Corps! Whoohoo!
Alright, well I’m off to go watch Alice in Wonderland in spanish with my host family.
Much love!
Sasha
At least it’s not TB… December 24, 2008
So last friday I went with the garbagemen in Santo Domingo to see how the system worked. We picked up trash from 4 zones in under two hours. Then came the hard part – sorting through the trash and recyclables. First of all, I was impressed to find that in addition to just picking up trash from individual houses, they picked up large pieces of trash off of the street and once off of a riverbank. I’m not sure how much of this they actually do on a regular basis and how much of it they did because I was there with them, but it was good nonetheless – at the very least, they know what they are supposed to be doing. We walked down to the campo with the wheelbarrows and three of the men dumped the organic waste into the compost pile and hand sorted out all of the inorganic that got stuck in there accidentally. The other three men walked over to the landfill with the inorganic trash to sort out the recyclables. The landfill was on fire. I was surprised, since this is not only really bad for the environment, but really bad for the lungs of the trashmen. I asked if this was a regular thing and they assured me that some kid threw a burning candle into the landfill yesterday and that since it is illegal, they would never do such a thing. But there aren’t really any kids running around the landfill area in the middle of the campo and they didn’t put a layer of dirt over it to put out the fire – instead they continued to throw new trash into the fire, thus fueling it further.
They sort the recyclables very thoroughly into aluminum, oil based plastics, other plastics, paper, and cardboard, and when they get 1000 kg of recyclable material, they sell it. This is the most time consuming part of the process.
They were hilarious to hang out with and they definitely had a grand time sorting through the trash. They would find an old leather belt and run around hitting each other with it, read thrown away notes kids in the secondary school have written aloud to each other and giggle – it was pretty funny… minus breathing in burning trash.
Saturday, I went to Piura. It was unbelievably hot, especially compared to how cold it has been here in Santo Domingo. It was difficult to sleep at night due to the heat – there was almost no point in showering. While in town, I got a stamp made, which was pretty exciting: it has the Peace Corps logo, my name, a line for a signature, and says that I am a “voluntaria de cuerpo de paz”. I want to go around stamping everything! I picked up my box of books, and bought some snack food so as to avoid spending a lot of money in Santo Domingo. I also filled up on ice cream and hamburgers – two things incredibly lacking in my diet at site. It was all around a lot of fun – getting to see the other volunteers and be in the city for a while.
On the first night of Hannukah, one of the other volunteers felt bad that nobody really celebrated Hannukah, so she went out and bought me some candles and a piece of cake (in leu of a menorah) and we had a little mini hannukah celebration in the hotel. It was incredibly touching and one of the nicest, most thoughtful things that’s happened to me here by far. Thank you Jessica!!! 
At some point while I was in Piura, I started having trouble breathing a little and woke up feeling like I was suffocating… and then my lungs started burning. So as it turns out I have bronchitis. And there’s a lesson for you. DON’T BURN TRASH – It leads to upper respiratory infections. But at least it’s not Multi-drug Resistant TB. So I have that to be grateful for.
On an unrelated note, I keep running into Peruvians I know in the street in Piura, which makes me feel like I live here, which is awesome. I ran into Teo and her daughter, some of Jah’s Peruvian friends, etc. It definitely makes me feel more integrated! I was standing at the ATM and suddenly a Peruvian man I’ve never met before stops and asks me if my names is Sasha. I naturally freak out and look at him like “who the hell are you?! how do you know my name?”. He sees the bewildered look on my face, laughs, and introduces himself as my host brother, who I had never met because he studies at the University in Piura. He recognized me from the pictures my host mom sent him. We hung out for a bit one night and watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, which is a really really really weird movie.
He and my other host sister came home on the bus from Piura with me on last night, so we have a full house. All three siblings are here and everyone definitely has the Christmas spirit!
Christmas doesn’t make much sense without snow.
Last night, I watched Volver, with Penelope Cruz with my host sister. It was a great movie. I recommend it.
Today I went with the garbage men again to see how they dispose of medical waste. We went to the health post to pick up what they had for us and all they had was a plastic bottle of used syringes. When I asked what they did with the rest of the medical waste – blood, other fluids, etc., the nurse just looked at me and said… why we just throw them in with the regular trash of course. I was like… oh. and we had a little chat about how that’s really dangerous for the garbage men who then hand-sort through the trash and occasionally inhale the burning remnants of it. They agreed and said they would separate it out, so I’ll be swinging by again next week or the week after to see if that actually happens. Then we went back down to the campo and I watched them properly bury the waste. The local boticas (kinda like a pharmacy) actually disposed of their medical waste more correctly than the medical post, so at least it’s not a universal problem. As we were walking back down to the campo I casually asked them what happened to the landfill fire. They said they had covered it with dirt and put it out, but it somehow has started burning again yesterday. Likely story. I’m going to have to think about what to do about this one.
In Peru, Christmas is celebrated on the night of the 24th, so we are going to have a feast of two chickens at midnight tonight with the whole family present.
Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah everyone!
Missing you extra this holiday season,
Sasha
Quitting is right up there with pissing in the Girl Scouts’ lemonade jar December 18, 2008
It’s just like everyone always told me it would be. A freaking emotional roller coaster. The highs are the highest ever – being in the Andes, getting to know the people, learning Spanish, seeing rolling mountains as far as the eye can see every day, doing environmental work, freaking living in Peru! And the lows are just as low – diarrhea, fleas, being homesick, lack of hot water, gloomy rain, darkness and cold, feeling lonely yet never ever being able to be alone, watching people get frustrated when you don’t understand what they’re saying. I imagine it’s a lot like being a manic depressive. Maddening. And yet so delightful.
I’m starting to grow accustomed to my surroundings here. I’m also getting used to completely random odd confusing things happening all the time. For example, people complimenting me on the color of my skin… um thanks?, small children getting so excited to see me that they run directly into me, fall down, and look up at me bewildered until I say something, at which point they start to laugh (this has happened more than once now), and walking out my front door to find 80s music blaring and half the town excavating the street for the water system directly in front of my house (kinda makes me feel like I’m in a music video).
Yesterday I went to an exposition at the technical institute. My counterpart’s students were doing presentations on what they had learned about natural production for profit. There were several tables and each student had to explain the process for making their fruit or berry based products. When I got there, Luz asked me to be one of the four judges: to go around and taste everything and listen to the explanations and basically grade them. So I did. And by the time I got around to the 12th presentation I felt like I was going to go into diabetic shock. I had eaten honey covered fruit salad, pinapple jam, orange jam, manjar blanco, and things I know were sweet but for which I don’t remember the names. My head was swimming by the end, but it was one of the only times in the last two weeks when I have felt full, so that was a surprising change.
At the exposition, while the students were setting up, her husband, who happens to be the director of the environmental group at one of the secondary schools cornered me and started explaining how all of the environmental groups throughout Santo Domingo need a single local – a meeting place – with a computer where they can do research, store documents, get together outside of a school setting, etc. I told him that sounded like a great idea, but I had only been here for two weeks, so I would be happy to help facilitate the process through the municipality, but I really had no idea where we could do this and would need the help of one representative from each environmental group. This is clearly not the answer he wanted to hear, so the conversation got a little heated. Let’s just say the man has a strong personality.
Today I went to a “chocolotada” which is a customary end of the year celebration for school groups involving vats of homemade chocolate mike and panneton. This one was for the environmental group JACUNA. It resulted in another heated discussion with this man about why I need three months to do my diagnostic. He accused me of being like every other beaurocratic official that comes into town and feels like they need to start from scratch and told me that he could do a diagnostic in a week and that I was being unproductive and wasting my time. I replied that while he has lived here for 16 years, Spanish is his first language, he is a man, and he knows every single person in the town, I have been here for two weeks, am a young woman, Spanish is my third language, and I don’t know anyone nor do I know how things work around here, so I’m gonna need a little more time and that he was being unreasonable. Luckily, he respects someone who can dish it back and I get the feeling he and I will be having many a heated discussion in the future. It’s really amusing and really good practice for my Spanish, because when I get emotional I feel the need to talk faster and it’s good practice for my vocabulary. I rather enjoyed it. That being said – the chocolate milk was the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted and was difficult to politely finish.
I did the tree and flower coloring activity with the other kindergarten class, which was adorable, as expected.
I have also started working on my community information gathering – not the diagnostic exactly, just data about the community, so I have been going around to different people in the municipality and all of the schools, the health post, etc to collect statistical data and have an excuse to meet more people in the community. I learned that i hate excel. I also hate the Peace Corps’ dependence on technology. Everything has to be typed, documented, emailed, spreadsheeted (is that a word?). It’s the freaking Peace Corps. I’m lucky to have a site with internet access and I’m lucky that I decided to bring my laptop (which the Peace Corps did not tell us to do), but if I didn’t have either one of these things, meeting deadlines, keeping in touch, and staying updated on Staff information would be nearly impossible.
Today I also went with someone from the municipality to take a look at the solid waste system in Santo Domingo. It’s fairly impressive, but can definitely do with some improvements. As of right now, Santo Domingo is broken up into zones of collection: 4 zones are collected monday and thursday, 4 zones are collected tuesday and friday, and on wednesday the trash is collected from the stores and health post. I’m going to go check out the medical waste disposal method next week to make sure it’s not contaminating too much. There is no system for recycling batteries in Peru, so what they do is collect them and sink them in concrete which they then use for construction.
There is separation for organic and inorganic waste and men walk around with potato sacks and collect the organic waste in one and inorganic waste in the other. They tie the bags off with different colored string. They fill up their wheelbarrows with bags and when they are full they walk the trash to the center. At the end of the day, when they are done collecting the trash, they take the organic trash down to the compost heaps, which are very well made (I got to see them today) and they take the inorganic trash down to the “landfill”. There, they go through it and separate out the recyclable materials. They sell the recyclables every 2 or 3 months and the money goes back into the program. They also sell bags of finished compost to the farmers in the caserillos for organic fertilizing methods and that money also goes back into the program.
The problem is that sorting through the inorganic waste to take out the recyclables is both dirty and time consuming work. Moreover, clean recyclables will earn them more money, so my (perhaps unfeasible) 2 year goal is to get people to start separating out the recyclables in their house before they throw it in with the rest of the trash.
At any rate, tomorrow I am going to go collect trash with the men. I’m gonna get to know different parts of the town and see exactly how it works for myself – then I’ll also get to see the landfill and how that functions. It’s gonna be dirty and it’s gonna be hilarious.
I finished reading the Kite Runner last night. Way way better than I expected. I think I was prejudiced toward it because it was required reading for incoming freshman at MSU my sophomore year and I remembered how mediocre “The Color of Water” was (required reading my freshman year) and didn’t have high expectations. That being said, it clearly blew me away since I finished it in 2-3 days. Thanks for insisting I read it, mom.
On a totally disgusting and unrelated note: Ryan told me that he got some data on the coliform levels in our tap water the other day. 102 usc/100 ml. That’s the level of feces found in the water. The standard according to the CDC is 1usc/100ml. That’s over 100 times the safe amount for drinking water. The EPA Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for coliform bacteria in drinking water is zero (or no) total coliform per 100 ml of water. Looks like Ryan has a lot of work to do. And that explains why the number 2 and 3 most commonly found illnesses here are related to parasites and other digestive issues. Filter, then boil! Vigilance, my friends.
Paz,
Sasha
P.S. The fleas are gone!
Alcoholism and Rain December 16, 2008
Alcoholism. It’s a big problem here. Big. Besides the harmless men passing out in the middle of the street and the random machete fights that flare up over land disputes in the caserillos, it affects the way things function here on a day to day basis. Meetings get canceled all the time because people are too drunk or hungover to attend. On the night after a party (which is nearly every night), there is no bread to be bought in town because the people that work in the panaderias were out the night before and are too drunk or hungover to make bread in the morning. People miss days of work, which leaves less money for food for their families. People end up bringing their children in to school hours late because they couldn’t get up in time because they are hungover. I think you get the point.
The problem is that nobody even blinks an eye at this. People drink at work together during the day sometimes – in the health post even. In fact, it’s often considered rude not to drink.
I don’t really know what else I want to say about this except that I’ve been feeling the effects of this problem rather acutely lately and it sucks.
Moving on: the fleas are mostly gone, so that’s good news, but eating food prepared by people who don’t have running water has had its predicted effects…
On the upside I got to hang out with the kindergarteners today! Too freaking cute. I drew up a couple of outlines (2 tree and 2 flower) and photocopied them to have the kids color them in and tell me which colors were the right ones to use and then I had them draw their own tree – some of the clever kids traced mine. It was adorable. They got paint EVERYWHERE. All over their adorable little faces and clothes. I’m doing the same activity again tomorrow with even younger kids – these kids were 5 and 6 and tomorrow’s are going to be 4. I can’t freaking wait.
I also had a meeting with my counterpart in the municipality today. School ends at the end of this week and most of the people end up leaving Santo Domingo for Piura or Lima to wait out the rainy season, so I’m left with the bare bones of the population to work with here. The goal of environmental education should be challenging without people or schools and so is the goal of reforestation. So I talked to my counterpart about it and he said there was a caserillo named Faical about an hour and half away by car/4 hour walk away that needs help with their reforestation project, so he would set me up to work there during the rainy season. Also, there are 4 other caserillos, Paldualto, Palobajo, San Miguel, and San Fransisco that need a waste management system of some sort, so I’m gonna head on out there and figure out if community sized or domestic micro-landfills are more conducive to their sanitation needs.
On thursday, I’m going to go see the solid waste system here in Santo Domingo and see if there’s any work to be done on it or if it’s mostly sustainable. Regardless, Jorge told me that there are several families (they have a list of which ones) that do not do a good job of separating out their organic waste from their inorganic waste and that I should go have a few educational sessions with them about that.
So in addition to the community diagnostic, it looks like I will have no trouble keeping myself busy during the rainy season.
And rainy season has in fact begun. It rains for most of the day every day now and it will only get stronger from here on out. It’s kind of dreary and cold, so I have to make sure to keep myself motivated to avoid taking advantage of cozy reading time in my room all the time.
I finished “Three Cups of Tea” today. It was good, not great. Great story, written a little self-righteously. Hard to say – something about it irked me a little. I think I’ve been indoctrinated into sustainable development work and it just doesn’t seem very sustainable to me. Maybe if it were more than just one person doing the work – if he didn’t refuse to train other people to pick up where he will inevitably leave off, I would consider it a great book. Read it. Let me know what you think.
Missing everyone tremendously,
Sasha
Alcholism and drug addiction Peru’s main mental health problems
Workin hard or hardly workin? December 12, 2008
It’s thursday – it’s been exactly one week since I’ve gotten to Santo Domingo. Today, I taught two sessions about HIV/AIDS prevention. One at each of the secondary schools. I spent somewhere between 5 and 8 hours yesterday preparing a handout and activities in Spanish for the kids.
The first group of kids was a little younger than I had been told they would be and weren’t familiar with a lot of the terminology, like oral sex, abstinence, etc. that I had prepared in the handouts and presentation, so it didn’t go terribly smoothly. It was a lot like pulling teeth. The kids were really shy about talking about the subject and the teacher didn’t seem really well informed, either, so there was some conflicting information going out to them, and that may have been counterproductive. I have tentative plans to return next wednesday to continue talking about it, hopefully having built a little rapport with them this time, so next time will augment the first session and go a little smoother.
The second school went a lot better! The kids were 16-18 and there was no teacher in the class with us, so they were a little more comfortable talking about it. We started out with a myths/truths activities. I made up a bunch of cards with myths and realities about HIV/AIDS and its prevention and how it spreads and handed them out to each of the students. They read their fact or myth aloud and then taped it to the corresponding side of the board. After all of them were finished, I gave them my handout on the realities of HIV/AIDS and some statistics about the prevalence in Peru. Then I had them break up into three groups for a competition. They each had to come up with safe ways to show affection to their boyfriend/girlfriend without having sex and the group with the most ideas won. After this activity, I had them remain in their groups and gave them another activity – they had to pretend that they were stranded on a deserted island and they had a list of 10 people to choose from. They could only take 5 of these people with them to help them survive on the island.
Fisherman, male, 31 years old, HIV+
His wife, six months pregnant, HIV+
School teacher, female, HIV-
Farmer, 42 years old, male, HIV+
Folk singer, female, HIV-
Banker, male, 37 years old, HIV-
Minister of church, male, 54 years old, HIV-
Doctor, female, 29 years old, HIV+
College student, male, HIV-
Policeman with gun (only she can use the gun), HIV+
At first, I didn’t tell them whether or not the people were HIV positive and had them present their answers. Then I told them which people were HIV positive to see how their answers would change. One group kept their answers the same because they said it’s unfair to discriminate against people with HIV and they are still useful members of society – the point of the exercise. One group changed their answer to all HIV- people, because they said there was no point in bringing HIV positive people on the island since without treatment they would just die anyway or infect someone, and the last group brought the doctor and the fisherman and only other HIV negative people so that they could teach someone else their trade before they died from AIDS on the island. It was really interesting to see the variety in strategies these kids chose. One of the groups chose the school teacher so that “she could cook for everyone” so that was a hilarious indication of how women are perceived in this society. Also, one of the girls talked a lot about how it’s important for men to be ok with dating girls whose families have more cows than their families, and that reminded me that holy crap I’m in the campo. Awesome.
I think the next step is to set up an educative session with all of the teachers and someone from the health post, because if the teachers aren’t educated properly in the subject, the kids really have no hope.
The electricity, water, and internet are out in the town today and it’s raining, so it’s kind of difficult to get things accomplished, but I’ve been going around talking to people.
Friday morning, I taught my decomposition timeline activity at the secondary school and it was a resounding success. I get better at it every time!
On Saturday, I am going to be “graduation godmother” to a little 10 year old boy named Marco, whose mother abandoned him, at his primaria graduation ceremony. This involves dressing up a little, getting a little gift, eating, dancing with him, and having Ryan come along to accompany me, apparently, according to my host mother.
On Sunday I am going to a PTA meeting with my host mother to determine how the leftover funds from the schoolyear are going to be spent over the break – maybe I can convince them to use some of those funds for an environmental summer school program!
Monday I’m teaching my tree-drawing class at the kindergarten and have a meeting with my counterpart who is finally back in town to lay out plans for the future.
And Wednesday I’m going to the education fair at the technical institute.
So yeah – keeping busy. Kinda Sleepy. Good stuff.
Chau
Sasha
A week’s worth of blog posts December 10, 2008
Let’s start out with the important stuff: I have a new cell phone number, that kind of, sometimes works at my site. I still have the old number for when I’m in the city, but this one is probably more reliable to get a hold of me. The number is:
011-51-73-968-704-000
Also – Things I could use in care packages: billions of lysol wipes to use to clean my room, more baby wipes, incense, and hand sanitizer. Please.
Friday
Well this is it – I’ve made it to Santo Domingo safe and sound and I’ve started to settle in, finally. This is by far the happiest I have been here in Peru. I finally have a sense of home here. I will be here, in this town for 2 years. I have a room of my own, I can finally unpack and slow down.
Ryan and I arrived here on thursday evening. His room was not ready yet, so he spent the first night in my room while I slept upstairs with my host sister. Apparently I talk in my sleep. In either Russian or English – either way, she couldn’t understand it. And it was only for 10 minutes. But it’s nice to know some things never change. Thursday night, my host sister, host mom, and I all sat around chatting and looking at pictures. We had an extensive conversation about some fruit you can rub on yourself to make the hair on your legs stop growing…? I’m not sure on the details, but I’m definitely going to try it and get back to you all on that. My sense of time is completely off because of all of the 3am traveling and sleeping in strange beds and generally not having a routine, but here is what happened to me in the past day in no particular order:
I painted my room. And I freaking love it. I bought paint in the market in Piura and brought it here. Only to find out that the really pretty shade of green I bought isn’t at all green. I think they mislabeled the gallon. But the market is 4 hours away and now I’ve opened the gallon – only to find a grey blue, which would look pretty drab next to my awesome yellow wall (I went all out for this – nothing worse than gross walls). So I bought some green in Santo Domingo. Problem is, paint is more expensive and there is not a good selection here, so it ended up being a bright aquaish green in the end. And what else? Well I don’t know if you’ve ever tried painting adobe, partially covered with concrete, with patches of plaster, but it is no easy task – pieces of the wall come off on the roller, so I basically ended up having to use a little brush for the whole room. Needless to say, this took me all day, but it was sooo worth it in the end. It was too dark in here before the painting.
The cement they put down outside my door before I got here was too high and so I couldn’t close my door because it would get stuck on the cement. So I had to shave that down with a kitchen knife.
Oh – and also the water got shut off today. For the entire town. Without warning. Right before someone (not me) had diarrhea in the toilet, which is right by my room. On the upside, it gave me the opportunity to utilize the phrase “Dude – I do NOT want to pee on your diarrhea”, which I feel is something I may not have the opportunity to say ever again. On the downside, it’s really hard to paint without water – not as hard as it is to flush a toilet or wash your hands, or drink, but still. So today was a little bit of a challenge, but to be honest, it made me feel even happier about being here. This is exactly the type of thing I signed up for!
And then the internet went out in the municipality, so there was none of that today – and it is shut down for the weekend and monday is a holiday (to celebrate some virgin), so you probably won’t be reading this until tuesday at the earliest.
The food situation here is totally different than it was in Lima, too. I don’t know how clean the preparation is, since on a day without water, I watched my host mom hand roll tortillas… On the upside, there is more variety in my food. So far, I’ve had french toast, goat cheese tortillas, pasta, fish salad sandwiches, lentil soup, and an omelette with rice. That’s only one meal of rice, and no potatoes! Amazing. I also no longer feel like someone is always pushing food in my face. I have actually been hungry once or twice and it is a feeling I have been missing!
My family is amazingly warm and inviting – they are all very affectionate – with each other and with others. Someone is always rubbing my arm or my back or calling me hija or putting their head on my shoulder, or reiterating that what’s theirs is mine. And they’re all about honesty and communication. When I told them I couldn’t afford to pay 9 soles a day for food, we had a brief painless honest discussion about it and now I pay 6 soles a day and still get my three meals. They get it and that’s awesome to know.
On a side note: the sunsets here are un-freaking-real. The most beautiful I have ever seen. The mountains are outstanding, and the temperature is perfect. I’m in love with my site.
As far as work goes – well, I’m starting out strong. First step is getting to know the people. I’ve been walking around and introducing myself to everyone. I already met the ladies that make amazing purses and ponchos and bags and belts and basically anything you need handmade. (Let me know if you want any of that – it’s unbelievably inexpensive for the quality of work. Unbelievably.)
Tomorrow (Saturday), I am going to a baptism with the family. They said something about 40 crates of beer. It should be outrageous.
And for next thursday, my host mom (who is a teacher at the secondary school) has set up an hour long lesson for me to give about HIV/AIDS prevention to a group of 30 kids aged 16-18. I’m nervous and excited!
So like I said… It has begun. I feel busy, productive, accepted, curious…. you name it, I feel it! And I freaking love it!
Paz,
Sasha
Saturday:
Well I’m going to have to start going to sleep earlier. I will be woken up every morning at 5am from now on. When my host dad gets up, the dogs which live above my room start freaking out until they get fed. Then he turns on the radio so that everyone in the house can hear. And with a little hole in my window and a few in my door, there is no way not to hear that. About an hour later, at 6am, my host mom gets up and starts cooking. Sleeping in will be impossible.
I put up my Peace Corps medically issued mosquito net today! That was incredibly exciting and definitely makes it feel even more like home
I am already starting to get a little frustrated by the machismo in Peruvian culture. As a fairly independent, somewhat feminist American woman, it is maddening to be treated as secondary. For example, when Ryan and I walk around with my host dad, he will introduce us both as being from the Peace Corps, but will only introduce Ryan by name, even though I’m the one that lives in his house. When we talk to random men on the street, they will look at Ryan and talk directly to him and to be a part of conversation with men, I often feel like I have to interrupt. I’m going to have to work on my patience in this regard because if I keep letting it frustrate me, I’m not going to get anywhere in the next two years.
On a different note – I got to go to my first Baptism today. To prepare, my host mom had me spray paint her dress shoes and plastic jewelry gold, so it would look more fancy. That’s right – spray paint. In Peru (and I have no basis for comparison, so this may be more universal), in the Catholic church, they call Jesus “Señor Jesus” and sometimes shorten it to just “Señor” which makes me smile. The baptism was for a 14 year old girl named Silvia, who is the daughter of my host uncle’s fiance (so she’s my cousin). The ceremony in the church went from 7 to nearly 9 and afterwards the mother threw out money and keychain bottle openers with Silvia’s face on them to a small crowd that gathered outside the church expectantly. Apparently, this is customary? I snagged one of the bottle openers, because really, there is nothing more fitting to celebrate a baptism. My host mom didn’t think I was fancy enough, so she made me wear her heels, neglecting to inform me that the post-baptism party would be up a freaking mountain. So we walked, very slowly, up the mountain to get to the auditorium. Somehow, I was appointed official Baptism celebration photographer, but I kept getting hassled about not taking enough pictures or not taking the right pictures so I just gave my camera to my host sister and let her take over.
Speaking of my host sister – she’s freaking awesome, especially for an 18 year old. We get along really well, she understands my sarcasm (IN SPANISH), which is priceless, she’s a great dancer, and a really good girl, not like a snivelly American 18 year old with an undeserved sense of entitlement. It’s great.
We sat around and waited until nearly 11pm until the band got there and the food was ready. Finally, we feasted and someone started bringing out the 40 cases of beer. I kept getting trapped in drinking circles and the only men who would ask me to dance were over the age of 60 and below my shoulders in height. I danced once with my host dad, but he was already drunk, so he kept stepping on my toes and giggling and I decided around 1:30 that it was time for me to leave. I didn’t want to get too drunk and I wanted to check on Ryan (who was home sick) and I wanted to maintain an air of professionalism, so I went home.
Sunday:
The party for the baptism didn’t end until 6am. When I got up around 9am, my host mom looked wrecked and told me that she wanted to sleep for a long long time and there wasn’t going to be breakfast for a while, but later we would have turkey, since all of the godparents received individual turkeys as gifts. Then she asked me to answer the door every time someone knocked to come pay for the water system, which makes it impossible to accomplish anything because people knock so frequently.
The reason we haven’t had water for a few days is because they are working on excavations in the street for a new potable water system and have to shut down the water sometimes when they dig. Every single family in Santo Domingo and its effected casarillos has to pay something like 100 soles for this new water system. My host mom has volunteered to handle the money for this. This means that every 5 minutes, starting at 6am, every single day, people come in and out of my house to pay for the system and chat with my host mom, because nothing here is ever purely business.
The excavation also means that every half hour or so, someone puts some dynamite to a piece of concrete basically right outside my house.
Once Silvia and Catty (my ornery host cousin – 14 and host sister – 18) woke up, they stumbled downstairs to come hang out in my room, since their uncle was still sleeping up the room they were sharing. They roll into my bed and start having little girl chat. They’re really affectionate, which is something I’m not too terribly accustomed to with my female friends, which I don’t have many of in the US, but they’re slowly getting me used to it. By the end of our 4 hour chat, rolling around in my bed, affectionately petting each other’s hair didn’t even seem odd to me. I have a feeling that when I get back to the United States, I’m constantly going to be in people’s personal space, what with being more affectionate in general and expecting kisses on the cheek for every time I greet someone or say goodbye. We’ll see though. The four hour chat turned into a bit of a fiasco, talking about their ex boyfriends, crazy experiences, and then turning into an account of how little sexual education they really do get in their schools and from their families and the petrifying consequences of that lack of education. So it turned into a little impromptu charla about the importance of condom use and how to properly use a condom and waiting and birth control and what the hell? and then I was educated on the back-alley abortion system in Santo Domingo and heard infinite amounts of gossip about their friends here who have had abortions and how sometimes people die because it’s not being done by a doctor. So all in all it was good background and practice for the AIDS charla I’ll be giving at the secondary school on thursday. I was blown away. I’ll probably have more to write about that later, when I’m able to process it better.
Finally we had our delicious lunch and it promptly started to rain. hard. And the roof on the way to my room is leaking, so I have to step through puddles to navigate through the house, but that should be fixed later tonight. And so rainy season is upon is. It is chilly (not cold, just cozy sweatpants and hoodie weather) and suddenly everything here is really cozy
I spent the entire day listening to all of the adults in the house fight for turns throwing up in the bathroom before continuing drinking more beer for immaculate conception day. Alcoholism. Yum.
The party for immaculate conception day started a day early. Right outside of my house. It seems to be the place to hold street parties. So Catty and I went out on the stoop for a while to chat and watch the festivities from a safe distance. And here I learned more about the culture of psychotherapy in Piura and pathological liars and people with split personality disorders. It was amazingly fascinating and makes me really excited to have such a good inside look at the realities of the social aspect of a different culture. It just goes to reiterate how very similar all humanity is at the base of things.
I finished reading “Water for Elephants” and recommend it as a really good escape from reality book.
Monday:
Was kind of a day of rest – nothing too much notable happened. There was a lot more conversing and integrating into the town and the family.
Tuesday:
Today was an insanely busy day. Woke up early to head over to the municipality building and get my laptop authorized to use the internet. Accidentally mistook tomato marmalade for tomato soup and served myself entirely too much for breakfast. That’s right. Tomato jam. Oddly delicious. Once I arrived at the municipality, I discovered that not only was my counterpart not there today, but the mayor was not there today, and the internet was still not working. Moreover, I have to write a solicitud to ask for authorization for my laptop.
Slightly dejected, I walked over to the comisaria (police station) to talk to the chief of police and introduce myself, so he would know who the gringa in town is. The chief of police was not there, but instead I got to meet Castillo, the second in command, and Ramirez, one of 5 officers Santo Domingo has and sat and chatted with them for a while. They were hilarious and I really enjoyed talking to them. In the process, I found out that there’s a pretty high incidence of homicide in Santo Domingo, due to the slogan “It’s not really a party until somebody dies”, a somewhat high incidence of robbery and domestic violence, but that’s all mostly due to the problems with alcoholism. We talked for a while about the cultivation of cocaine and this really potent marijuana called “the red monkey” in some of the surrounding areas to Santo Domingo and about the exportation of said narcotics to the United States. Apparently, some days, when something really bad happens, the police will even walk over to some of the caserillos to check out what’s happening there. It can take over 8 hours to walk to one, and longer in the rainy season. He also talked about rape and statutory rape and the lack of sexual education and the taboo surrounding the subject with parents. I also learned that the way the police system works in Peru is a national system and every year they move all of the police to different parts of Peru, so next year there will be new police officers in Santo Domingo and I’ll have to reintroduce myself all over again.
After the police station, I moved on to the technological school, where my other counterpart, Luz, works. There I met the director of the school, Luis Jimenez Jimenez, which leads me to believe that his parents are related? but I don’t know. They have an amazing library at the institute. Lots of books in Spanish about sociology and different schools of thought – I’m definitely going to be spending some time there. I also set up a meeting at 3:30 with the environmental group at the technical institute, was invited to their fair on friday to display what they had learned this school year (something like their final exam/presentation), and was invited to lead some youth development projects for next year – educative sessions about self-esteem and team-building. Awesome. I’m on a roll.
After the technical institute, I went to the health center and introduced myself to the doctor briefly before moving on to the kindergarten. One of the teachers, Graciela, who also happens to be the head of the PTA at the secondary school was adorable – just like you would expect a kindergarten teacher to be and I set up a session for next monday to bring in pictures of trees and flowers for the little kids to color in.
On my way back up the hill, I stumbled upon the radio station and met the couple that runs it – Rosa and Gregorio. We chatted about the possibility of having radio programs in the future to help announce my projects and maybe give little charlas over the radio so that the people in the caserillos, who listen to the station more than others, will have a chance to hear some things too – not just the people in Santo Domingo proper.
Right across the street from my house is the Juez de Paz, which is basically a place for mediation – they help to resolve land disputes and after police reported assaults, they help mediate those situations as well. I introduced myself there as well before going home for lunch thoroughly exhausted.
At 3:30, I met up with the environmental group from the technical school to see what they had been working on this past year. Planting grass, apparently. And next year, they want to plant something like 500 rose bushes. So we had a little chat about the importance of planting native species and the possibility of augmenting their program next year to plant fruit trees and other plants that are easier to maintain than rose bushes. They seemed to be relieved at the idea and so we decided to go to the bullfight.
It is not like bullfights in the traditional sense – person with a red sheet taunting and injured bull – this is two bulls fighting each other. The bullfight, I believe, is in honor of Immaculate Conception day, which was yesterday. The owners of the bulls put down good money and I think people in the town bet on it as well. It’s mostly a bunch of drunk people from the caserillos that come out to watch. And that explains also why there were so many people huddled around the bulls while they were fighting. It was the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen in a while – it’s not a good bullfight unless someone gets gored. The bulls don’t die – they bleed from their horns a little, but I’m told that heals and they keep on keepin on.
At the bullfight the environmental group invited me to their end of year dinner party at 7. The school year ends in 2 weeks and then everyone will be leaving for the rainy season to work in Lima or Piura city, so I can’t start any REAL work with the schools until next school year, but I’m trying to get to know them now.
The dinner party was pretty cute. And then they brought out the Sangria and beer and started dancing to Cumbia. I stayed until about 9:30 and then went home to finish watching Amelie with Spanish subtitles with my host sister.
And then I woke up in the middle of the night itching because…. well, I have bed bugs. YAY!
That should do it. I’m off to go introduce myself to more people. No rest for the wicked.
Paz,
Sasha
NEW ADDRESS/ CELL PHONE NUMBER!!! December 1, 2008
Well things are very very hectic here this week. Swearing in went delightfully – all 47 of us swore in. We were one of only 2 groups in Peru that haven’t lost any volunteers during training, so that’s something to be proud of! Immediately after swear-in, we got on a bus to go to a hostel in Miraflores. There were about 30 of us in a hostel with a shortage of beds (good thing there are couples) and only 2 bathrooms. Madness. We left to grab some dinner and celebrate the completion of our training at Beirhaus, which was as class as could be expected. It was a great time.
The next day was full of goodbyes – we won’t be seeing our fellow volunteers for another three months and then we got on a 14 hour bus ride to Piura city. Everything went surprisingly smoothly what with having to move all of our worldly possessions more than halfway across the country on a bus, except for the part where one of our fellow volunteers got his laptop bag stolen – with his camera, ipod, laptop, passport, journals and everything else really important that you try to keep on you at all times. Watching that happen is probably the closest I had come to crying all week. Bummer.
Moving on – we made it to Piura and spent the day at the hostel, getting things organized. Today, I am leaving to go to my site for a few hours to drop off all of my things and do an inventory of what I need to come back and buy. I will be taking the 3:30am bus back to Piura later and spend all of tuesday buying the essentials, like a mattress, pillows, sheets, paint, etc, etc.
I will be spending tuesday night in the city and I have a meeting about the PEPFAR grant on wednesday, after which I will be returning to my site on thursday with my newly purchased things.
It is probably more stressful than it sounds. My site is 4 hours away on a mountainside and I have developed a healthy paranoia about my things getting stolen, since it seems to happen most frequently in transit. I’ll make it though – I’m sure of it.
Today is World AIDS day – there was a parade through Piura city, which was really impressive to see. Secondary school aged children marching for HIV/AIDS awareness. Awesome.
Now the good stuff… I have a new address and I have a cell phone.
Cell Phone: It is free for me to receive both calls and text messages… so call me and text me! Unfortunately, I don’t have service for this phone at my site, so it will only work a few times a month when I am in the capital city, but I will be able to get your texts at that time. Not all of your voicemails, because the system only saves them for a week, but it’s better than nothing….
To call me: 011-51-73-968-956-048
Address: same rules apply – anything over 1.1 lbs goes through customs. Which isn’t necessarily a big deal – because other volunteers have successfully gotten packages out of customs, but it’s less of a hassle if the package weighs less than 1.1 lbs
Alexandra Viches
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla Postal No. 801
Serpost Piura
Piura, Peru
Well that’s it for now, gotta catch the bus to Santo Domingo.
Much love,
Sasha
